and
lament that memory is now all that it contains for them. Here are
several curious specimens of sculpture. Some stones, not of the oldest
type, have the crossed sword, symbolical alike of the warrior character
of the dead and the religion of peace in which he rests. There is one
with a figure in full chain-armour; and others, again, of an older date,
ornamented with the geometric reticulations already discussed.
Descending a few miles farther, in the small fertile delta of the
Lachlan, and overshadowed almost by the old square castle of the
M'Lachlans, there is a bushy enclosure which may be identified as the
old burial-place of Kilmory. A large block of hewn stone, with a square
hole in it, sets one in search of the cross of which it was the socket.
This is found in the grass, sadly mutilated, but can be recognised by
the stumps of the branches which once exfoliated into its circular head.
Beside it lies a flat stone, on which a sword is surrounded by graceful
floral sculpture.

Let us cross over again to the valley perforated by Loch Crinan.
Northward of the canal there is a remarkable alluvial district, through
which, although it seems crowded with steep mountain summits, one can
travel over many a mile of level turf. From this soil the hills and
rocks rise with extreme abruptness, in ridges at the border of the
plain, and in isolated peaks here and there throughout its flat alluvial
surface. Conspicuous, in a minor degree, is a great barrow like a
pyramid, with a chamber roofed with long stones in its centre. Near it
is one of those circles of rough stones called Druidical, and farther on
there is another, and then another; some of them tall pillars, others
merely peeping above ground. They literally people the plain. This must
have been a busy neighbourhood, whatever sort of work it may have been
that went on around these untooled fragments of the living rock, which
have so distracted our antiquaries in later centuries. If they were the
means or the object of any kind of heathen worship, then the existence
close beside them of the vestiges of early Christianity may be set down
as an illustration of the well-known historical opinion, that the first
Christian missionaries, instead of breaking the idols and reviling the
superstitions of those whom they went to convert, professed to bring a
new sanctity to their sacred places, and endeavoured to turn their
impure faith, with the least possible violence, into the pat